Brian K. Vaughan

Brian K. Vaughan (born July 17, 1976) is an American comic book and television writer best known for the comic book series Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina, Runaways, Pride of Baghdad, Saga, and Paper Girls. Vaughan was a writer, story editor, and producer of the television series Lost during seasons three through five. He was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Dramatic Series at the February 2009 ceremony for his work on the fourth season. 

The writing staff was nominated for the award again at the February 2010 ceremony for their work on the fifth season. He was formerly the showrunner and executive producer of the TV series Under the Dome. Wired describes Vaughan's comics work as "quirky, acclaimed stories that don't pander and still pound pulses." His creator-owned comics work is also characterized by "finite, meticulous, years-long story arcs," on which Vaughan comments, "That's storytelling, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. 

Something like Spider-Man, a book that never has a third act, that seems crazy." In 2007, Erik Malinowski, also of Wired, called Vaughan "the greatest comic book visionary of the last five years," comparing him to Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Paul Pope, and Steve Niles, and praised his addition to the TV series Lost as redeeming that series' third season. Vaughan has won 14 Eisner Awards, 14 Harvey Awards, and a Hugo Award for his writing.

Brian K. Vaughan was born July 17, 1976, in Cleveland, Ohio, to Geoffrey and Catherine Vaughan. He grew up in Rocky River and Westlake. Vaughan and his older brother are both fans of writer Peter David. Vaughan said their adolescent comics reading was largely defined by a shared love of David's 12-year run on The Incredible Hulk. Vaughan also cites Joss Whedon as the reason he wanted to become a writer, a decision he made while attending St. Ignatius High School, from which he graduated in 1994.

Vaughan attended the New York University Tisch School of the Arts to study film. While a student there, Vaughan took part in Marvel Comics's Stan-hattan Project, a class for fledgling comic book writers. Vaughan's first credit was for Marvel Comics' Tales from the Age of Apocalypse #2 (December 1996). He would eventually write for some of the highest-profile characters at Marvel, including X-Men, Spider-Man, and Captain America. He would also write Batman and Green Lantern for DC Comics and Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight for Dark Horse Comics.

From 2002 to 2008, Vaughan, who came to prefer writing his own characters, wrote the creator-owned monthly series Y: The Last Man, a post-apocalyptic science fiction series about the only man to survive the apparent simultaneous death of every male mammal on Earth. The series was published in sixty issues by Vertigo and collected in a series of ten paperback volumes (and later a series of five hardcovers "Deluxe" volumes). The series received Eisner Awards in 2005 and 2008 and numerous other nominations. 

New Line Cinema acquired the film rights to the series. Vaughan wrote his own screenplay for the project, though it was reported in March 2012 that Matthew Federman and Stephen Scaia were in final negotiations to write their own version. In 2006, Vaughan published the graphic novel Pride of Baghdad, which centers on a group of lions who escape from an Iraqi zoo after the start of the Iraq War. The book was praised by IGN, who named it the Best Original Graphic Novel of 2006, calling it a "modern classic," lauding it for combining a tale of survival and family with a powerful analogy of war, and praising Vaughan for representing various viewpoints through the different lion characters.